The practice of stringing tobacco leaves on sticks or poles preparatory to hanging the sticks in a barn for curing the tobacco has given way in recent years to the use of mechanized picking and packing of tobacco in containers preparatory to putting a plurality of tobacco containers in a barn for curing. It has been the practice in the use of containers for curing tobacco to load the tobacco into a container arranged in a first or loading position and to then compress the tobacco in a filled container, after which it is held in place by a plurality of tines or elongated steel rods passing through the tobacco within the container. The container, thus loaded, is rotated 90.degree. so that the tobacco within the container is arranged vertically to facilitate passage of air past the tobacco during curing. The rotating of the filled containers has been generally done with forklifts, 3 point tractor hitches, or manually.
One difficulty experienced with the prior practice of loading tobacco into containers with the leaves arranged in a flat or horizontal attitude within the container is that the tobacco tends to be more densely packed in the center of the container than at its sides. This is undesirable because it results in uneven amounts of air passing through the tobacco at the sides of the container than passes through the tobacco at the center of the container with the consequence that the tobacco within a given container is cured differently or irregularly.